grizzly.anderson: A great study of how Bradbury came to write Fahrenheit 451 as a progress through his own short stories, letters and drafts. A similar collection of stories but without some of the other material is also available as "A Pleasure To Burn"

Guy Montag is a fireman, but not like the firemen we know. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

This is a classic, and a great one to read and reread. Bradbury takes a believable world, and chooses a possible path to a future that no one should want to exist. It's a great example of why I love scifi books. It's the chance to look around and ask what if. Then, you can take that what if and run. Here, the idea of people watching more television and eventually stop reading changes how life is lived. We follow Montag who goes from unquestioning, no-thought living to wanting to read. He begins to look around and see the world he lives in to find things that are better than walls that are televisions. He learns to question things. It shows a very believable future that can still happen if tv's grow so large they take up entire walls (how far are we really from this already?), pop culture being more important that reading and learning (practically there), and thoughtful consideration being so discouraged it's illegal.( )

An excellent read for a rainy day! A deep, thoughtful experience that leads you though the emotional journey that Mr. Montag experiences as the protagonist, and the development he receives through the book. Bradbury does an excellent job conveying the urgency and the feeling of the world spinning around the character as the reality of this dystopian future sets in his mind. In the surprisingly short time that Clarisse is in the book, we are emotionally connected from her from the start. The investment that Montag gives her is enough to make us care about what happens to her- (What did ever happen to her, anyways?) . The surrounding characters provide the grey washed out-ness that Bradbury is trying to convey about this future of bland, boring people, conformed into the same iron mold. The only thing I begrudge this book is that Beatty feels like a strange pawn to shout exposition. The quotes, while somewhat appropriate, seem to be more of a "tack out the quotes, shout more quotes; MORE QUOTES!!!!!! Are you confused yet? MORE QUOTES!" He does make for an interesting antagonist, though, and the interaction between Montag and Betty is intriguing. ( )

a brilliant novella that really stuck a deep chord in me. The idea of a society in which books are outlaws and new ideas wither and die is the kind of stff that keeps me up at night. Just an absolutely captivating read as we follow the journey of a 'fireman', who job is to seek out rogue book hoarders and scorch their trove to ashes. ( )

Ear thimbles playing music constantly. Wall TV. Women starving themselves until they look like bacon strips. Actual police chases televised in living color. Kids tearing around in cars at insane speeds just for something to do. The country at war and nobody knows why. A total disconnect with the natural world. Does any of this sound even the least bit familiar? Bradbury's classic is a first-rate thriller that will never get old. ( )

This intriguing idea might well serve as a foundation on which to build a worst of all possible worlds. And to a certain extent it does not seem implausible. Unfortunately, Bradbury goes little further than his basic hypothesis. The rest of the equation is jerry-built.

Ray Bradbury has more than ideas, and that is what sets him apart from most writers who try to be original. He is fantastic, and human. He never looks at anything with a jaded eye; he is a storyteller every minute of the time, and he is definitely his own kind of storyteller.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

But that's the wonderful things about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.

But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.

I'm afraid of children my own age. they kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my firends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. They believed in responsibility, my uncle says. Do you know, I'm responsible. I was spanked when I needed it, years ago. And I do all the shopping and housecleaning by hand.

The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more "literary" you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.

Wikipedia in English (3)

"The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning... along with the houses in which they were hidden." Fahrenheit 451 is an enlightening story that is almost daunting. In a place where firemen build fires to burn books, this story is somewhat forboding because although it may seem extreme, it causes the reader to look at how much we take books and freedom for granted. Guy Montag goes outside the norm of a society where relationships are based on material things in order to try to discover how life would be if one were to actually think and live for themselves instead of being told what to do and how to behave. This book made me realize how much I should appreciate a good solid book and made me weary of what our world could come to in the future with the increase in technology and the disappearance in the amount of some books.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman

Fireman Guy Montag is a fireman whose job it is to start fires. And he loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn, along with the houses in which they were hidden. Then he meets a seventeen-year old girl who tells him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who tells him of a future where people can think. And Guy Montag knows what he has to do ...… (more)